Southeastern - voted the worst train company in Britain twice in the last eight months - will carry on running commuter services until June 2018, it has been announced.

The much-berated company, subject to frequent tirades on social media from unsatisfied customers, will continue running services between London, Kent and parts of east Sussex.

Following the news people have taken to Twitter to vent, with Peter Howarth describing the decision as "a joke", and James Garner adding the company "is why I cycle to work".

In February, Southeastern came joint bottom in a survey of more than 7,000 regular travellers, scoring a satisfaction score of just 40 per cent.

Meanwhile in June a survey of 27,000 train customers found 45 per cent of Southeastern passengers considered their ticket either poor or unsatisfactory in terms of value for money - the highest dissatisfaction level among the UK train companies.

Even Rail minister Claire Perry admitted passengers who use the service "haven't always received the service that they deserve".

But she claimed under the new arrangement the company, operated by transport group Go-Ahead, will provide thousands more seats, improved services and better ticketing.

Ms Perry said: "This decision has been taken after careful work by the Department for Transport with Go-Ahead Plc, to ensure that the franchise can genuinely improve its services against a challenging backdrop of vital improvements to the tracks and stations.

"Given these challenges, we believe that continuing the franchise rather than entering into a new one at this point will provide passengers with the best service for the next three years as well as offering the best value to all of us who help fund the railway through our taxes."

Go-Ahead chief executive David Brown added: "We're looking forward to delivering these plans and are wholly committed to improving performance and services for customers and our local communities."

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David Statham, who was recently announced as Southeastern's new managing director 

However Mick Cash, acting general secretary of rail union the RMT, said: "This is a reward for total and abject failure.

"No matter how badly these private train companies let down the travelling public they can still rely on the Government to protect them and the fat profits and subsidies they are robbing from the rail network."

Manuel Cortes, leader of the TSSA rail union, said: "Nothing succeeds like failure if you are Southeastern. Our real time arrival figures showed this week that 40 per cent of their trains arrived late last year.

"For many years they were also allowed to charge the highest fare increases - 3 per cent on top of inflation. So for the most expensive and late-running service, they get rewarded with a new deal.

"If they were a football manager like David Moyes (former Manchester United manager) they would have been sacked years ago.”

The promised improvements include:

More than 95,000 extra seats across the network, including 1,000 extra seats on Southeastern's Javelin Train high-speed services every day.

Better services, including improved connections between London, north Kent and east Kent thanks to a new hourly high-speed service via Gillingham, Ramsgate, Dover and Ashford.

Javelin trains will call at Snodland, Martin Mill and Walmer for the first time, along with extra high-speed services for Margate, Broadstairs and Ramsgate.

Better ticketing, with a commitment to work with Transport for London to roll out Oyster card acceptance to Dartford and Swanley, and to introduce Oyster on the high-speed service between St Pancras and Stratford International.